The vacationing crocodile went home today. You can read the story here.
Here's an excerpt:
The toothy reptile was snared near the Charleston County park pier after spending at least one winter in a Mount Pleasant pond.
It's headed for Gatorama, a 15-acre park of wetlands and hammocks that features daily alligator and crocodile shows, farm-raised alligator meat and boardwalk tours "teeming with alligators, crocodiles, monkeys, bobcats, panthers, birds and other Florida wildlife."
And here's my favorite part:
The transfer was approved by the Florida Wildlife Commission, which handles crocodiles, a tropical species recently downgraded from endangered to threatened. Its natural range is thought to reach only as far north as southern Florida. The commission decided not to release it in the wild for a number of reasons, including the fact that crocodiles will attack each other when they are strangers in the wild, said Steve Bennett, of S.C. Natural Resources.
A bigger reason might be that once a crocodilian roams, it tends to continue roaming. A 6-foot alligator was trapped in a pond near Beaufort and released on Bears Island in Bull's Bay more than 30 miles and five river basins away. It was caught again in its home pond 14 years later — as a 10-footer.
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